Sections

Parliamentary Backbenchers: powerful, powerless or pawns?

OTTAWA, ONT.: SEPT. 20, 2012 -- Conservative MP Brad Trost, a backbencher since he was elected in 2004, works in his office in the Justice Building in Ottawa on Sept. 20, 2012. (David Kawai for Postmedia News) For Natalie Stechyson (Postmedia News)

OTTAWA — In the past, they’ve pushed to abolish capital punishment in Canada, they’ve won for wives the right to secure a divorce from their husbands and, more recently, they’ve reopened aspects of the abortion debate.

So, are Parliament’s backbench politicians really just the malleable, milquetoast political pawns they’re often described as?

If you had read a recent interview with Joan Crockatt, who will run as the federal Conservative candidate in Calgary Centre in the coming months, you might think so. She told the Globe and Mail: “If I’m a backbench MP, I’m just fine doing that. To me, the job is to support the prime minister in whatever way that he thinks.”

But if you had followed the recent political agenda of Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth, you might think differently.

Woodworth’s private member’s motion on when human life begins has garnered plenty of headlines and controversy – and a second round of debate Friday in the House of Commons. Although it doesn’t have the support of the prime minister, it will be voted on this week.

“I know that the prime minister’s position has likely depressed the support that I might have received from some people,” Woodworth, the MP for Kitchener Centre, said during an impassioned speech on motion 312 last week. That hasn’t stopped him from charging ahead on an issue dear to his heart.

Backbenchers have proven, historically, that they do have heft when they want to wield it.

One of Canada’s more notable private member’s bills was independent MP Joseph Shaw’s 1925 “An Act Respecting Divorce,” which gave “the wife a right to secure a divorce from her husband upon the same grounds upon which a husband may secure a divorce from his wife.”

And although capital punishment wasn’t formally abolished in Canada until 1976, it was backbencher Robert Bickerdike who first introduced a seminal private member’s bill to wipe it from the Criminal Code in 1914, according to David Chandler’s “Capital Punishment in Canada.”

Of the 242 private member’s bills proposed in the 41st session of Parliament, four received Royal Assent — three were from Conservative MPs and one from a Liberal MP.

Liberal MP Geoff Regan’s bill designated March 26 as “Purple Day” to increase public awareness about epilepsy. Tory John Carmichael’s bill will make it illegal to prevent someone from displaying the flag, as long as it is displayed in a “manner befitting this national symbol.”

Tory Joy Smith’s bill aimed at combatting international human trafficking. And Dan Albas’s bill will make it possible to transport wine intended for personal use between provinces.

A backbench MP, or “backbencher,” is a member of Parliament who is not a cabinet minister, minister of state or parliamentary secretary. The term is usually, though not always, taken to mean someone from the governing party.

Despite a frequently low profile, these MPs have a range of responsibilities, from representing their constituencies to scrutinizing government spending. They sit on committees studying bills. They can ask questions during question period. A backbencher can also move adoption of a private member’s motion or a private member’s bill: legislation sponsored by an individual MP that is not part of the government’s proposed legislative package.

The process of getting his bill passed showed Albas, a self-proclaimed “rookie,” that a backbencher can bring local concerns to Parliament’s attention and get action, the MP for Okanagan-Coquihalla says.

“Ministers are very much focused on good policy over the macro. But I think as members, it’s our jobs to be able to bring up and make representations on how those policies are working.”

Conservative MP Brian Storseth says being a backbencher allowed him to move his particular interests forward, in his case a bill to drop some hate speech sections from the Human Rights Act. That bill made it through first reading in the Senate this summer.

“(Being a backbencher) allows you to take your own issues that are important to your constituents and make them your priority. And I think that cabinet ministers sometimes don’t have that ability,” Storseth, the MP for Westlock-St. Paul says.

Backbenchers have indirect, not direct power, which they must wield creatively and wisely, says Tory MP Brad Trost. Still, the limits can be hard to swallow, he says, such as when there isn’t enough funding for a particular infrastructure project in an MP’s riding.

“When it doesn’t come through, you feel that maybe you failed [constituents] a little bit and you didn’t deliver,” Trost says.

The biggest hurdle is how to make your voice heard, says the MP for Saskatoon-Humboldt.

That’s why Trost, a backbencher since he was elected in 2004, says he hopes to introduce a private member’s bill later this year that would give backbenchers more power.

He’s vague, however, about what form that bill might take. It could focus on better communication and more direct input from backbenchers, or less conrol of the political agenda from other government institutions. It could also include ways of making MPs more accountable to their own constituents.

Nelson Wiseman, an associate professor at the University of Toronto specializing in Canadian politics, argues that backbenchers have relatively little influence, whether in opposition or in government, because of a slow centralization of power in the prime minister’s office that has been in motion since the Trudeau era.

“For the governing party, and for the opposition parties, the perceived benefit is that they’re united. They’re singing from the same songbook. They’re humming the same hymn,” Wiseman says. “From the point of view of the public, it’s sad because you’re just subjected to spin rather than what people think or their authentic or genuine words.”

Ned Franks, a professor emeritus at Queen’s University and the founding president of the Canadian Study of Parliament Group, goes further, arguing backbencher’s private bills are sometimes used to front government policy.

“But that doesn’t mean all private member’s business by Conservatives is going to be party business – it just means some of it is going to be,” he adds.

While Storseth says he can’t respond on behalf of all private member’s bills, his own bill wasn’t a case of simply pushing Tory policy.

“I can assure you that I was putting my private member’s bill forward with or without the government’s blessing,” Storseth says, adding that he’s been working on it for the last five years.

But what happens when, instead of complementing the government’s agenda or getting its support, a backbencher speaks against it?

Last May, Conservative backbencher David Wilks initially told about 30 constituents that he would stand up against Bill C-38, the first budget implementation bill. That meeting was recorded without his knowledge, then widely viewed on social media.

The next day, Wilks, the MP for Kootenay-Columbia quickly released a statement saying that in fact he supported the bill.

And moments after Woodworth suggested last week that Harper’s position on his motion about the fetus might have silenced potential MP supporters, he backtracked.

“What I really meant to say is that I know that there are members in the Conservative caucus, and I’m sure in the opposition caucus also, who share my view of the importance of universal rights and honest laws, but who might be dissuaded from supporting this motion – for whatever reason.”

One Tory MP, Edmonton’s Brent Rathgeber, has used his personal blog to defend his right to speak independently about policy.

“One can occasionally be critical of the Government without being disloyal,” he wrote last month. “I proudly serve in the Conservative (Government) Caucus but do not leave the viewpoints of my constituents behind every time I board a plane to Ottawa. It is natural for me to question Supply Management, since I represent 140,000 consumers but not a single dairy farmer. Similarly, all of my adult constituents are taxpayers but only a tiny fraction work for the federal government; as a result, I believe it is appropriate that I question public pensions (including my own) and demand respect for taxpayer dollars generally.”